Seattle area day care uses kids for social experiment.
 

Saw this posted on Facebook earlier and was kind of perturbed after reading it, I can honestly say I'd be pissed if my 8 year old was being taught Marxist ideologies as the WAY to live life.

We shared our own perspectives on issues of private ownership, wealth, and limited resources. One teacher described her childhood experience of growing up without much money and her instinctive critical judgments about people who have wealth and financial ease. Another teacher shared her allegiance to the children who had been on the fringes of Legotown, wanting more resources but not sure how to get them without upsetting the power structure. We knew that our personal experiences and beliefs would shape our decision-making and planning for the children, and we wanted to be as aware as we could about them.

Collectivity is a good thing:
"You get to build and you have a lot of fun and people get to build onto your structure with you, and it doesn't have to be the same way as when you left it.... A house is good because it is a community house."

Personal expression matters:
"It's important that the little Lego plastic person has some identity. Lego houses might be all the same except for the people. A kid should have their own Lego character to live in the house so it makes the house different."

Shared power is a valued goal:
"It's important to have the same amount of power as other people over your building. And it's important to have the same priorities."

"Before, it was the older kids who had the power because they used Legos most. Little kids have more rights now than they used to and older kids have half the rights."

Moderation and equal access to resources are things to strive for:
"We should have equal houses. They should be standard sizes.... We should all just have the same number of pieces, like 15 or 28 pieces."

BTW, I call bull over a kid accidently destroying Legotown, it was the teachers who did it.

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/arc.../lego212.shtml

Was informed consent part of this? I'm thinking no...

Re "Rules and Ownership":

If I pee on it, I own it.

Because......... :confused:

Anyway, this social experiment has been done for decades with college students and lucky high school students. It's about time middle school and elementary school kids were given it. I wouldn't think to try it with a day care because they aren't old enough to grasp the larger point. But, if the teachers thought this could provide an early, memorable (yet fun and not traumatizing) lesson then that's great.

The American learning system spends too much time teaching about ponies pissing rainbows--maybe that will change one day when people stop being afraid of everydamnthing and begin to challenge young intellect in preparation for the future. There are waaaayyyy too many dumbass college students for America to be such a powerful nation.

I don't think we should compare this with experiments or lesson plans used on college students or high school students who have knowledge of ( or should) the fact that they are in a class. The article involves 4-8 year olds in daycare. These kids expect to color and build legos until their parents pick them up. I believe these teachers have a hard-on for communism ( shared power, denying private ownership, collectivism, equal housing) and are using these kids as lab rats just to justify their own political beliefs. And did the parents know about this? I'm gonna say NO.

Dr Phil- reason I think that is because they had stated how displeased they were with the power struggle within legotown and had wanted to get rid of the legos. Also, popular marxist belief is that the only way to succesfully transition to a socialist/communist society from a capitalist one is through revolution. I see the destruction of the Legos as that revolution. Waaay too convenient to be an "accident".

"Oh Nooooooo it's Obamanization for reals!!!!" :rolleyes:

Not quite, but it's funny you associate Obama with Marxist ideology. This article was published in 2006, so "Obama-mania" wasn't in effect then, besides our beloved President is a social democrat NOT a democratic socialist. I'm sure that upsets you greatly.

I think you missed his facetiousness/sarcasm.

I think this is excellent. It makes me miss being a teacher sometimes.

I would love to know how this may have panned out in the after school program that I worked for, which was largely poor children.

Good segment:

We weren't working from carefully sequenced lessons on ownership, resource sharing, and equity. Instead, we committed to growing an investigation into these issues, one step at a time. Our planning was guided by our goals for social justice learning, and by the pedagogy our school embraces, inspired by schools in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Inthis approach, teachers offer children a provocation and listen carefully to the children's responses. These responses help teachers plan the next provocation to challenge or expand the children's theories, questions, and cognitive challenges.

I hope it was your daughter, assuming you're fertile.

We're just going to take some of those 4x2 blocks and spread them around a little.

Was this on the news? I live in Seattle and I've never heard this story about the daycare. And FYI, most daycare workers are not teachers. Also FYI, many daycares run at community/four-year colleges are used as labs for college and high school students studying childhood behavior.

:)

Actually the author states that the daycare is run out of a church, It doesn't say anything about this daycare being affiliated with a university or college.

WTF is acting white and what's up with the worthless security guards? Just put up cameras in the area if you don't want human involvment. What's up with Tyler Perry and Disneyworld?

quit hijacking my threadz, first Obama and now Tyler Perry and subway beatdowns! I wanted to get people talking about the article and if they felt the teachers were projecting there own personal social beliefs on the children as opposed to the children coming to there own unbiased conclusions.